In this solo episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, host Bradley Hamner introduces the weekly "Bottom Line" series and outlines its purpose: to give small business and insurance agency owners concise, actionable advice for growing leadership, teams, and profitability. The episode begins with a sponsor segment promoting Club Capital, the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents, highlighting its financial dashboards, forecasting tools, and CFO services that help agencies make data‑driven decisions. Hamner then shifts to the core theme – the value of attention. He argues that attention is more valuable than time and urges listeners to conduct an "attention audit" to examine what media, podcasts, books, and conversations they consume. Citing Michael Hyatt’s concept of "drift," he explains how unchecked consumption leads to subtle declines in business culture and decision‑making. He shares his own experience of curating content, reducing the number of books read to focus on those that develop specific skills (e.g., digital marketing, leadership, personal development), and periodically unfollowing sources that no longer add value. Hamner outlines practical steps: identify skill gaps, select targeted books, podcasts, and communities, and perform a quarterly review of all inputs to ensure they align with business goals. The episode concludes with a reminder that the short, solo format is designed to respect listeners’ time while delivering high‑impact insights, and a call to lead well.
Chapters
So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders.
These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business.
I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.
Just get what you need and go.
So with that, let's get into today's episode.
Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee, or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm. Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create and measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee. Or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm.
Hey team. So I was talking to somebody the other day and I thought this would be hopefully something that would serve you in your own journey. And we were talking about attention and focus, and you've heard it said that time is infinitely more valuable than money. You may even have heard me say that your attention is even more valuable than your time. I simply want to invite you or encourage you to consider this: pay attention to what you are paying attention to. There is a lot of things social media-wise, on our phones, etc. We're just bombarded with so many different things. I think it's healthy to go through a period of time to where you have to make an audit not just of your business, but what is actually going into your brain. I've gone through different times where I've deleted not just social media apps. I think that one gets shared quite a bit, and I think there's valid validity in that, focusing, looking at social media from a business perspective of being a creator of it instead of a consumer. But just in general, the conversations that you are having with people, the podcasts that you are listening to, the news feeds that you have. What are all of the things that are going into your brain on a, on a regular basis? Because I think it's those things that begin to kind of shape ultimately our thoughts, our mindset around certain things, and then whether or not we're actually developing the skills necessary to move our business forward. So let me give you kind of an example. So again, pay attention to what you are paying attention to. Oftentimes, I think it was Michael Hyatt that first kind of gave me this this idea of the drift and that you begin to kind of drift away over a period of time. And I think that's certainly been the case for me in a lot of different aspects of my life is you never wake up and say, today's the day I'm going to sabotage my business. You know, you just don't do that. Furthermore, you never want, never think today's the day I'm going to ruin the culture in my business, but it begins to drift. You never think that when you hire someone, You know what? This is a mediocre hire, but I'm going to do it anyway. Or this person is definitely not going to work out, but I'm going to do it anyway. We don't ever consciously make that decision. So ultimately, I think what happens is I have drifted over a period of time by what I'm consuming, what I'm listening to, what I'm reading, possibly. Where I am spending my time, or in some cases wasting my time, instead of staying very focused on— I really believe this is the obstacle or obstacles that's holding me back. And so therefore, let me make sure that I'm surrounding myself with people. Let me make sure I'm listening to the right podcast. Let me make sure I'm listening, I'm reading the right books that are going to help me with that. You've heard me say there was just a couple of years ago I did a podcast with Chris on here talking about you know, the top books that we had read. And I had set a goal in the beginning of the year to read 36 books that year. Okay, well, great. I accomplished that goal. But I can't tell you— I was, I was really— I can't tell you some of the things I took away from some of those books. Some of them were fantastic. Some of them I was reading just to try to hit some arbitrary number. Now I read a lot less books, and those books are curated specifically to the things that I'm wanting to try to improve either in myself or in my business. And if you heard me, uh, the episode I did just a couple weeks ago called A Low Information Diet, it was kind of along the same things I'm sharing with you today of taking in too much content, taking in too many things. There were too many voices, whether it was people I look up to, um, etc., coming into my head, and I couldn't make sense of all of those. Maybe you have been the exact same way. So now I think about what are the skills that I want to be able to develop. So as an example, I have, uh, really focused a lot for the last 12 months or so, 12 to 15 months around marketing. Okay. So I'm learning a lot around marketing. Whether in marketing, there's a lot of different places to go. Is it paid media? Is it copywriting? Is it landing pages, et cetera? So then I needed to take that and say, okay, what specifically am I trying to learn around marketing? Really, for me, it was digital marketing. How do you begin to build a brand? And so I started to say, what are all the books that I needed to read? What are the podcasts? Which means there were some podcasts that I don't listen to nearly as much anymore because they don't talk around that topic. Now that's shifting a little bit. Shifting a little bit more over into some personal development things for me. And also, I'm wanting to begin to write my very first book that will come out in a couple years. Okay, well, who are the people? Who are the groups, Facebook groups I need to be a part of? What are the books that I'm going to read that are going to help me to that endgame? Okay. And so Whatever it is for you, if you're wanting to learn how to be a better leader and you really feel like that, hey, you want to take a big step forward in your own leadership journey, then thinking about what am I paying attention to? Who are some of the best leaders that are out there? What are some of the podcasts around leadership specifically that I want to develop? What are the books that I need to read around leadership? Who are the other business owners and peers that I have that I really look up to and say, I would love to kind of emulate them and I want to think how they think around leadership. And so again, pay attention to what you are paying attention to. This is not designed to be something specific around, hey, you might want to cut out social media. You might want to stop listening to the news. I mean, look, you've got to do what you feel like is right for you. I don't listen to the news very much. I don't read the news. I don't watch Fox News or CNN News or MSNBC. It's just not healthy for me. None of those things help me move the needle in my business or in my leadership or in my personal journey. And so pay attention to what you are paying attention to. I hope that these little— I hope all of our episodes are helping you along your journey to becoming a better business owner. And so these short solo episodes are designed for me just to kind of share a little bit around the things that have been helpful to me. And so I now have it that once a quarter, I'm doing kind of an attention audit, okay? And I begin to think, okay, well, what are the things I've taken in this quarter? Books, podcasts, videos, YouTube videos, et cetera, that I've been taking in. And is that really actually helping me? So that's what I've done this past quarter as we go into start of now fourth quarter, looking at what does that need to be for this course. So hopefully that serves you. It's helped me out. That means I had to actually say no and actually unfollow some, some people that were interesting but not actually helping me. So I'm now curated my journey a little bit more along the way. Now, I hope that means that this podcast makes it on to one of yours that has helped you to be able to grow your business and develop in your leadership and developing in your teams. And so it's my job to hopefully continue to curate content, whether it's content like this or our interview guests, etc., to be able to have some really great people that are going to impact you both personally and professionally. So I hope this has been a great use of your time and you've got a good return on your investment. All right everyone, till next episode, lead well.
If you're listening to this podcast, I know you're someone who has a growth mindset.
You probably want to be able to grow your book of business as well.
What Direct Click specializes in helping insurance agencies leverage Google Ads and SEO to drive inbound phone calls, leads, online visibility, and even organic traffic. You can be confident in knowing exactly how well your ads are working and getting support in what really matters in your business. Get exclusive online marketing support today when you visit directclicksinc.com. You know how important it is to develop yourself and to develop your team. Well, if you're going to do that, you want to do it with the best. Work with Coach P Consulting to learn and implement the same strategies that he used to sell over 700 life policies in 2021 alone. You'll get personalized coaching 2 times a week and an in-depth look at how his office is run, and Coach P will train your team alongside his own. Get your first month free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast during signup. Visit coachpconsulting.com to get started. If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you've heard me say many times the best use of money is to be able to buy back your time, and one of the best ways to do that is by hiring a virtual assistant. Whether it's an executive assistant or creative marketing assistant, Rock Solid has a unique hiring process to net the very best talent, and they intentionally match you with a great fit for you and your team. They value your success as if it were their own, because it is. If you're looking to build a rock solid team for your business, reach out to Tracy and her team at rocksolidassistants.com.
